1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relate s to a method of manufacturing a wiring board and an electric connection box which uses a wiring board manufactured by this method.
2. Description of Related Art
Conventionally, an electric connection box was manufactured by attaching various bus bars, acquired by punching copper bars into desired circuit patterns, to an insulating plate or placing those bus bars between a plurality of insulating plates to thereby form a wiring board, an d housing this wiring board into a case.
Naturally, the conventional electric connection box using bus bars requires multiple molds which are adapted to all kinds of bus bars and result in a high manufacturing cost. When some design change demands an alteration in circuits, all the molds should be constructed again, which makes it hard for the conventional electric connection box to be adapted to a change in circuit design.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method of manufacturing a wiring board and an electric connection box, which do not use bus bars that require molds and are thus inexpensive and which can easily be adapted to a change in circuit design.
To achieve the above object, a method of manufacturing a wiring board according to this invention comprises the steps of winding electric wires around an insulating plate in first and second directions different from each other; cutting the electric wires at a first desired position; connecting the electric wires at a second desired position where the electric wires cross each other; and attaching a connecting terminal to the electric wires at a third desired position.
It is preferable that the insulating plate should be formed of polypropylene or polybutylene terephthalate which has an electric insulating property.
It is also preferable that the insulating plate should have multiple retaining grooves for retaining electric wires, formed in a periphery at predetermined pitches, and terminal grooves, provided in the retaining grooves, to which pressure-contacting terminals are to be attached.
To achieve an object of this invention, an electric connection box according to this invention is manufactured by housing a wiring board manufactured by the above-described method in a case.
It is preferable that the case should have an upper case and a lower case.
According to the present invention, there are provided a method of manufacturing a wiring board and an electric connection box, which do not use bus bars that require molds and are thus inexpensive and which can easily be adapted to a change in circuit design.
The aforementioned object of this invention, together with other objects, features and advantages thereof, will be readily apparent from the following description with reference to the accompanying drawings.